Thursday, January 24, 2013

Canada is Missing Out - Where's Big Pharma?

My opinion: I'm really not sure why this is happening. Perhaps this could relate to my previous article on Big Pharma - maybe pharmaceutical companies are focusing more on the U.S., as the U.S. has a greater history of recognition for pharmaceutical research. After all, since the U.S. probably has more research universities, then they might get even more progress done than in Canada. But, as usual, one could argue that it's all about the big money - my guess is that pharmacies make more money by selling in the U.S., so could this all be a business incentive? It would be interesting to see more comparisons like this with other countries. Then, by observing the patterns between the economic/political statuses between countries, we might better understand why big pharma is leaving some places.

(John Bergeron): Canada is a strong nation economically, with a
$1.7-trillion gross domestic product and spending on research and
development in excess of $30 billion annually. By any measure these
numbers are among the best in the world. But pharmaceutical research,
once strong, is in decline in this country. The closure of research labs
by Merck, Boehringer-Ingelheim and AstraZeneca in the past two years
has left us with no pharma-based pre-clinical research in all of Canada…
Despite the enormous amount spent annually on research and development
in Canada, decline in discovery research across the country has been
accelerating. Discovery research has traditionally been the mission of
research universities and is recognized through awards such as Nobel
Prizes. But Canada has only one Nobel Prize in medicine, awarded in 1923
to Frederick Banting and John Macleod for the discovery of insulin.
Compare that to Boston, where the Harvard Medical School alone claims
eight different Nobel winners in medicine, including two expatriate
Canadians from McGill University. In New York City, the small
Rockefeller University, a research-focused institution, has no fewer
than 15 Nobel laureates in medicine; its most recent, the late Ralph
Steinman (who received the award posthumously, in 2011), was also an
expatriate Canadian from McGill. The president of Rockefeller, Marc
Tessier-Lavigne, is a Canadian Rhodes Scholar from McGill. Clearly,
Canada generates talent, but we seem to be unable to provide talented
Canadian researchers with top-notch opportunities here at home, in
Montreal or elsewhere. Could the empty labs of Merck, AstraZeneca,
Boehringer-Ingelheim and Perkin-Elmer be used to retrieve young Canadian
talent gone elsewhere to do discovery work? After all, the labs are in
place, and the talent is definitely available. Can we not make Canada a
magnet for talented young people in pharmaceutical research?